New Literary Award in NZ goes to Brian Turner

The Central Otago Environmental Society, COES, has awarded Brian Turner the NZ Poet Laureate of Nature for his lifetime’s work in poetry and activism, fighting for and celebrating the natural world. This is a new national award in New Zealand, and is backed by the National Library of New Zealand and by former sponsors of the NZ Poet Laureate Award, John and Wendy Buck of Te Mata Wines.

Brian Turner was appointed the fourth Te Mata Estate NZ Poet Laureate in 2003-2005.

“During his tenure and in the following years, we formed a strong friendship with many shared interests, growing to admire him as an outstanding New Zealander,” says John Buck. “His myriad achievements justify the title of Poet Laureate of Nature, which we fully support.”

Peter Ireland spoke on behalf of the National Library, home to the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award.  “Brian’s whakapapa in terms of speaking to and of the environment in New Zealand is founded on a lifetime’s presence in our landscape, both the physical and literary forms of it. He is much loved, respected and recognised in these spheres and to acknowledge that with this honour is apt and fitting.”

As part of the award, there will be a sculpture of one of Brian’s poems in his loved landscape of Central Otago.

“It’s remarkable and warming to be given this award,” Brian said. “New Zealand has had the means to work hard to protect nature. Instead we’ve often cruelly damaged a lot of our forests and our lands and waters. It was important I was a supporter of environmental concerns, taking part and drawing attention to the respect required for our natural world.”

Brian came to know the land and waters of New Zealand intimately. Now 80, he was a national sportsman, an offshore sailor, a fly fisherman, a road cyclist, and and a mountaineer, climbing several major peaks including Aoraki/Mount Cook. He traversed the land and the rivers and wrote of them and for them; his environmental activism extending for over fifty years. There is much wisdom in his observation that “an attack against the Body of Nature is an attack against oneself”.

As well as the NZ Poet Laureate award, Brian Turner has been awarded numerous awards, including an Hon D Litt from the University of Otago, an ONZOM for his services to literature and the environment, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry, the Commonwealth  Poetry prize and several national book awards for poetry. Much of his writing has been in service to the natural world.

To celebrate this much deserved award, Jillian Sullivan, Peter Ireland and Paula Green have each picked a poem of Brian’s to share.

3 poems

Taieri Days

How far off those days, never mine
and never not mine, when
the only poems I knew
were the bursting greens of willows
by the Taieri in spring,
greens of cress and water weed
and the grass that sheep grazed
incognito because they all
looked much the same.

But the sky never did,
the clouds never did
shaped like tubes, plates, slats,
piles of rubble, knucklebones
and bunting streaming before the stars.

The river sprang and shone,
had a shifty and open
arrangement with skies
arcing and stretching
over the Maungatua
and Rock and Pillar ranges.

I didn’t want to own
or sell anything so grand
and communal as land;
all I needed
was the right to belong,
one’s spirit all the colours
of the spectrum,
like the sky.

Brian Turner
from Quadrant, v 42, 1998

I love this poem, imagining Brian in the hills and by the river, only needing to belong. A year ago when I asked him how he finds contentment, he said straight away, “I like the formation of the clouds,” and here they are in this poem, first published in Quadrant in 1998.

Jillian Sullivan

Just This

Find your place on the planet, dig in,
and take responsibility from there.
_ Gary Snyder

Affecting without affectation, like these sere hills
then the early evening sky where Sirius dominates
for a time, then is joined by lesser lights,

stars indistinct as those seen through the canopies
of trees shaking in the wind. There’s this wish
to feel part of something wholly explicable

and irreplaceable, something enduring
and wholesome that supresses the urge to fight …
or is there? Ah, the cosmic questions

that keep on coming like shooting stars
and will, until, and then what? All I can say
is that for me nothing hurts more

than leaving and nothing less than coming home,
when a nor’wester’s gusting in the pines
like operatic laughter, and the roadside grasses

are laced with the blue and orange and pink
of bugloss, poppies and yarrow, all of them
swishing, dancing, bending, as they do, as we do.

Brian Turner
from Just This, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2009

It is hard to settle on one poem by Brian, but the heading quote by Gary Snyder tipped my choice in favour of ‘Just this’, the title poem of the book published in 2009. It has been lovely returning to Brian’s poems, though it’s not as though they ever leave you. To his voice – bardic, truly wise, looking at the world through the eye of the world, and the heart. Helping us to accept and to enjoy our predicament.

Peter Ireland

Deserts, for instance

The loveliest places of all
are those that look as if
there’s nothing there
to those still learning to look

Brian Turner
from Just This, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2009

I cannot think of a more apt poet to be the inaugural NZ Poet Laureate of Nature. Brian’s poetry has provided paths and windows that enrich our connections with nature. In every book. In myriad ways. His poems sing with the music of Central Otago, they glimmer with the light and beauty of skies mountains plains. Poetry that brings nature to life within poetic forms is a vital aid, not just today in these toxic planet and human depleting times, but across the centuries. Like Peter, Brian’s poetry sticks with me, as a tonic in the difficulty of a day, as a way of breathing in what matters, what is important. I have lived with an artist for eons who is known for his Central Otago beehive works, so the southern landscapes resonate deeply for me. Perhaps this adds to the incredible effect Brian’s poetry has upon my heart. The poem I have chosen shows how a handful of words can unfold into so much more. Sublime.

Te Herenga Waka University page

Brian Turner was born in Dunedin in 1944. His first book of poems, Ladders of Rain (1978), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and was followed by a number of highly praised poetry collections and award-winning writing in a wide range of genres including journalism, biography, memoir and sports writing. Recent and acclaimed poetry collections include Night Fishing (VUP, 2016), and Just This (winner of the New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry in 2010). He was the Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate 2003–05 and received the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry in 2009. He lives in Central Otago.